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Grant Shapps’s ‘get rich quick’ site investigated

Michael Savage

October 5 2012, 1:01am, The Times

Grant Shapps passed himself off as Michael Green when he spoke at a US conference in 2004Times photographer, Paul Rogers

A company founded by the new chairman of the Conservative Party that sells online “get-rich-quick” schemes is being investigated by Britain’s advertising watchdog amid claims that it used a fictitious web “guru” to sell its products.

The company, HowtoCorp, has also been accused of inventing testimonials by people claiming to have bought its products, which have included eBooks called Stinking Rich.

Grant Shapps, who set up HowtoCorp in 2002, says he took on the alter ego of “Michael Green”, the company’s supposed frontman, to keep his political and business lives separate.

The Conservative co-chairman, who became an MP in 2005 and attends Cabinet meetings, passed himself off as Michael Green when he spoke at a US conference in 2004. He handed the running of the…